Jade Regent Character Creation Rules

Here’s the rules we are using for our Jade Regent campaign from our GM Paul, with some explanations from me.

Allowed Rulebooks

APG is in, the Ultimate books are out (although during the campaign you will have the chance to pick up Japanese-style weapons and maybe even to get trained for levels in ninja or samurai). [Ed: Paizo has been overwhelming us with new rules over the last year, and frankly a lot of it isn’t well balanced. We haven’t been allowing Ultimate Magic or Ultimate Combat in any of our games so far. In my Reavers campaign it’s core only, anything else by specific GM inclusion or asking me.]

Chargen Methods

Stats are 4d6 drop the lowest, arrange as you will. If your stat block sucks you may use the point-buy method, this time around I’m setting point-buy at High Fantasy, 20 points. Standard races are all in, but if you want something other than that let me know and we’ll talk about it. No evil races or monster races will be allowed though.
Evil characters are not a good fit for this particular campaign.

FATE Aspects and FATE Points

Aspects! Please write 3 aspects for your character before you reach the gaming table, we will create 2 more for each character when we get together for the first session. The first three should be as follows:The first aspect should be a description of your character’s archetype, such as “Half-orc sorcerer in tune with nature’s fury”, “Physically perfectionist elven wizard”, or “Charming Sunderer”. Try to make sure your character’s core competency makes it into your first aspect.

The second aspect should describe your character’s trouble, the main weakness or stumbling block that keeps causing trouble for the character. It can be a personality trait that causes trouble for the character, or it can be something bad that just keeps happening to him for some inexplicable reason. Examples: “Why did it have to be fairies?”, “Vengeful over hurt pride”, “Family Man”.

For the third aspect, think about what motivates your character, what shaped him to become who he is, and what pushed him to the life of an adventurer. The best aspects are ones that can be used both for or against your character. ex. “Must protect my friends at all costs”, “People are not always what they seem”, “I Heart Forbidden Lore”, “There must be some way I can find a profit from this…”

Each character will get 3 fate points. When you level up, they will be refreshed. You can get more fate points whenever your character suffers due to one of his aspects (depending on the situation, this could result in failed skill rolls, damage, or just social humiliation). Spending a fate point allows you to either reroll the d20 roll you just made, or add +4 to it, your choice, but you can only spend a fate point when one of your aspects applies to the roll you’re making. For instance, “I Heart Forbidden Lore” could help you if you’re doing research or trying to recall facts about some kind of demonic monster, but it wouldn’t help you on a to-hit roll against a goblin. Regardless of aspects, a fate point can always be spent to stabilize you if you’re dying.

Character Advancement

There will be no XP awarded or spent. Level advancement will be declared by the GM when it needs to happen. [Ed: XP are frankly one of the most annoying things to deal with – useless bookkeeping that promotes uninteresting behavior. None of our campaigns use them.]

Multiclassed Spellcasters

Badges

We’re not using experience points, but I wanted a mechanism that allowed me to give rewards for completing side-missions. Thus I created the badges; each one can be earned by completing one of the side-missions in the adventure path.

As soon as I introduced them the players started plotting to find a way to collect them all! Besides the pleasure of collecting, they each also get one fate point when the group gets a badge.

Speaking for Paul, not sure there’s that much more to it – certain story events have badges, often optional ones. We got the “halfling rescuer badge” from rescuing a halfling in the swamp, for example. One of the three badges so far is plot mandatory the other two are for optional stuff. We get an actual little printed out badge; images will be in the session summaries.

They’re not really replacing XP – he just advances all of us in level at appropriate times, which does refresh our Fate Points as well. Badges are separate from that.

This is very interesting. I’m about to start the Rise of the Runelords path, myself. I’m a latecomer to the Adventure Path scene. I’m considering using some of your Character Creation Rules. I like the inclusion of the Fate Points into DnD!

And I will definitely be nixing experience and just leveling them up when needed. As far as I can tell, that seems to be the best route with all Pathfinder Adventure Paths. Both the other two that I’m playing in currently are having serious problems with leveling up at the right pace.

Would you mind terribly if I just copy paste your Fate Points rules out to my players?

Sure, I declare it all OGL blah blah. For the record it’s kinda Paul’s rules, but it’s basically straightforward application of the OGL FATE rules to the OGL Pathfinder rules. Feel free and link us if you like though!